posted at 1:25 pm on September 23, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

Joe Biden continued his one-man Gaffemaster routine last night while being interviewed by Katie Couric at CBS. He attempted to discuss real leadership in the face of financial catastrophe, and reached back to the brilliant example of FDR and his televised speeches during the 1929 stock-market crash. Biden demonstrated the same expert grasp on history as he has on Barack Obama’s policies in this election:

Joe Biden’s denunciation of his own campaign’s ad to Katie Couric got so much attention last night that another odd note in the interview slipped by.

He was speaking about the role of the White House in a financial crisis.

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed,” Biden told Couric. “He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”

How ignorant is this statement? Let me count the ways:

Franklin Roosevelt didn’t become president in 1929 during the crash. He won the 1932 election and took office in 1933, largely because of the 1929 crash and the incompetent protectionist policies that transformed it into a Great Depression.

If FDR and President Herbert Hoover didn’t talk about the “princes of greed” in 1929, by the time FDR took over, that kind of populist rhetoric had certainly taken root. FDR greatly escalated the scope of federal government to institute the kind of redistributionism that Obama and Biden now champion.

If Hoover or FDR appeared on television in 1929 or even 1933, only a few hundred people would have seen it. Television was still an experimental medium and wouldn’t be introduced to the public for at least another decade.

FDR started off his long stretch as President with a series of thirty speeches on the radio called “fireside chats” that lasted from 1933-44. He used that to connect on a personal level with ordinary Americans in a manner never before attempted (or even possible). These informal addresses helped float his immense popularity through very troubled times. But it is also incorrect to say that FDR was totally averse to using populism for his purposes, as he did in his conclusion of Fireside Chat #6, when he warned against “that definition of Liberty under which for many years a free people were being gradually regimented into the service of the privileged few.” Not coincidentally, that speech came on the eve of his first midterm elections in 1934, and it’s generally considered an attack on the business sector for not supporting his reforms.

At any rate, it looks like Biden learned his history from Faber College:

Blowback

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Comments

do these tools understand that it was because of FDRs policies that the country sank into a deeper depression in 1938?!? it was WW2 that rescued the American economy.

are these liberals implicitly saying they want a third world war??

bloghooligan on September 23, 2008 at 1:28 PM

It kind of funny, but I remember doing a high school report on Hoover. In the research for that, I discovered that most of what FDR was lauded for doing had already been done by Hoover–just expanded and federalized. I thought at the time something to the effect “Hoover got a bad rap.”
It wasn’t until more recently that I came across the evidence that FDR’s policies deepened and prolonged the Depression. Tracing that line all the way back, Hoover doesn’t look so good. Maybe not for the reasons “everyone else” thinks, but, still, there it is.

Biden is the ASS that keeps on giving. Looks like he is trying to force Hillary on the ticket for the October surprise. Just another soul under the bus.
GOOGLE: SAUL ALINSKY BARACK OBAMA HILLARY CLINTON LUCIFER

Here’s another little diddy that’s been widely overlooked. Ever since the Chia Pet became the VP nominee, the Obama camp has labeled him as Scranton Joe, the down-to-earth fella who grew up in Pennsylvania. This is all a ploy, an obviousy phony one at that, to lure bitter Pennsylvanians in Obama’s direction.

“And when the British burned the Smithsonian Institution in the War of 1812, Abe Lincoln, God bless ‘em, got on the holographic video box and assured the nation that our camel corps remained intact, ready to take the fight to the enemy.”

~ Stuff Joe Biden Said

“More coal plants? Hell, we’re not building more coal plants in this country, not when there’s plenty of clean, abundant energy available from photosynthical transmorgification. I pioneered the photosynthical transmorgification legislation 26 years ago. We’ve got the first photosynthical transmorgification plant in Delaware, down around Dover.”

- More Stuff Joe Biden Said

“John McCain? fully qualified to be president! Hell, I championed John McCain’s candidacy back in 1968, when he was still a junior officer in the Navy, and I was a young anthracite coal miner in the death pits of Scranton. Later on, we traveled together, he was my military aide, and let me tell you, he could raise some hell.”

- Yet More Stuff Joe Biden Said

“Hillary Clinton, God love ‘er, she’s a good man, and probably more qualified to be vice president than I am. In fact, she’s one of the few senators who can match me shot for shot, drink for drink. And if that’s not a qualification for leadership, I don’t know what is.”

- Even More Stuff Joe Biden Said

“Obama wants to take my guns? When he can pry them from my cold dead fingers, God love ‘im. I’ve got a Baretta or two, use ‘em to shoot banthas down there near Dover.”

“I guarantee you Barack Obama ain’t taking my shotguns, so don’t buy that malarkey,” Biden said Saturday at the United Mine Workers of America’s annual fish fry in Castlewood, Virginia. “Don’t buy that malarkey. They’re going to start peddling that to you.”

Biden told the crowd that he himself is a gun owner. “I got two,” Biden said, “if he tries to fool with my Beretta, he’s got a problem. I like that little over and under, you know? I’m not bad with it. So give me a break. Give me a break.”

The 1929 crash did not cause the Great Depression. The depression was caused by a massive and catastrophic shrinkage in the money supply. That shrinkage was the result of a run on the banks, followed by regulators’ forced increases in reserve requirements. Wealth literally disappeared overnight. The last straw was the Fed’s failure to serve as the “lender of last resort,” causing banks to fail. The rapid loss of liquidity and banks’ use of stocks as collateral then led to the stock market crash.

GulfCoastBamaFan on September 23, 2008 at 2:04 PM

If I remember right, this change in liquidity was one of FDR’s policies.

That’s a great video of Biden ranting against dirty coal. The Republicans need to make a commercial out of that and play it all over the Appalachian regions of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio, and all over West Virginia. There are lots of bitter white Democratic voters in those regions who depend on coal for their livelihood. Biden’s statements will enrage them.

I kind of think this is some sort of David Alexrod scheme to show why McCain’s too old for office, by proving that you can’t trust a 73-year-old man to be president when a 65-year-old on the campaign trail acts like a bumbling idiot.

The current financial crisis stems in large part from the fact that people who shouldn’t have been buying a home, or who bought more home than they could afford, now can’t pay their bills. Their bad mortgages are mixed up with the good mortgages. And thanks in part to new accounting rules set up after Enron, the bad mortgages have contaminated the whole pile, reducing the value of even stable mortgages.

Of course, there are other important factors at work here, having to do with changing technology among other things. And even if the bad mortgages weren’t in the system, we’d still have the hangover from the end of the housing boom. But the financial system could have handled that with the usual corrections. The biggest dose of poison entered the financial bloodstream through Washington. And some people warned us. In 2005, Fannie Mae revealed it overstated earnings by $10.6 billion and that it didn’t really know what was going on. The Bush administration pushed for reforms, but those efforts were rebuffed by Congress, with Democrats Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd taking point, because Fannie and Freddie have spent millions in campaign contributions.

In 2005, McCain sponsored legislation to thwart what he later called “the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole.”

Obama, the Senate’s second-greatest recipient of donations from Fannie and Freddie after Dodd, did nothing.

Meanwhile, Raines, the head of a government-supported institution, made $52 million of his $90 million compensation package thanks in part to fraudulent earnings statements.

But, ah yes, the greedy criminals responsible for this mess must be somewhere on Wall Street.

Assuming this is true (and Goldberg rarely speculates), why isn’t McCain HAMMERING Obama on this? McCain needs to make a 30 second commercial out of this, and shove it right up Obama’s a$$.

The people of Delaware send him back to Washington, but to their regret he keeps returning every night on Amtrak.

I am sure the coal miners in PA, West VA, and throughout the nation are thrilled to hear Biden trashing their livelihood and threatening to close all coal plants (which are responsible for at least 50 percent of our electricity).
Yet the late night media still finds nothing funny or humourous about the Obamanation ticket? Curious.

Next we’ll learn that Joe Biden’s father died of black lung disease. (No libs, that is not a racist phrase).

I realize that there is really not a debate about media bias, but there can be NO CLEARER evidence of bias than the fact that Biden is not being mercilessly ridiculed for these gaffes. Imagine if Palin had said something that stupid! It would be headlines in the New York Times.

This is why I always say “more free speech not less” Given the opportunity to speak stupid people will always say stupid things. Hey Joe! it’s puff puff pass, puff puff pass. Tim Robbins used to be the poster boy of stupid, you know the whole “Bush is stifling my free speech”, it must be true since Tim said it on every channel, and every news program every hour. So much for stifling.

Assuming this is true (and Goldberg rarely speculates), why isn’t McCain HAMMERING Obama on this? McCain needs to make a 30 second commercial out of this, and shove it right up Obama’s a$$.

lionheart on September 23, 2008 at 3:18 PM

I agree with Goldberg that is the real problem. Except that he misses one point that seems obivious to me. Much of the Housing boom was actually fueled by the problem mortgages and wouldn’t have been nearly as high without them.

Simple supply and demand. Higher demand for houses drives up prices for houses.

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed,” Biden told Couric. “He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”

– Biden

How ignorant is this statement? Let me count the ways:
Franklin Roosevelt didn’t become president in 1929 during the crash…(followed by facts from the historical which anyone of with even a rudimentary knowledge of American history is aware, and anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of mathematics knows that 1932 comes after 1929.)

– Ed

…it’s not a small error, and so it is not petty to point out this and the other fundamental mistakes pointed out above. This is because Mr. Biden’s entire premise seems to be that when the Black Tuesday descended upon the nation, Mr. Roosevelt sprang into action. At the time, Mr. R was the Governor of New York…and while Wall Street resides within his geographical jurisdicaiton, there was no action into which he could legally spring.

Then again, on the Left facts are pesky yet malleable things.

The markets of today — and the crisis of today — run roughly parallel to that of 1929, what with being overblown by margin buying, speculation and greed…only that today’s is spiced by the fall of Fannie Mae (and her bastard brother Freddie Mac), a child of Mr. Roosevelt’s “efforts” when he was finally able to “spring into action” (three years into the problem, as noted). This time, though, it was an excess of what Mr. R would have applauded (were he able to derive political advantage from it), not greed its opposite: the statist populist willingness to give away the store so’s even the under-funded and thus undeserving poor can buy houses…which they can’t afford.

So…we defy the laws of sound banking policy (akin to defying the laws of physics when walking along a 30-story ledge)…and loan money that even a freshman stuck taking his or her mandatory economic class (on the way to a degree in womens or labor or black studies) could tell you will never be seen again…and now there’s great wailing and gnashing of teeth…when you live in a fantasy world, built on fantasy social and economic doctrine, don’t be surprised when reality comes back with a vengence!

…it’s as if the folks in 1959 Cuba would be surprised by El Che’s “trials” and subsequent executions of Batista’s folks…what would you expect….

…it wouldn’t be so bad if Ol’ Joe wasn’t so very boring…if he were a clever, charming liar like…oh…Billy Clinton or Barry “I’m really a centerist at heart” Obama….

He’s such a dreary liar, telling lies so very easy both to refute and to use. He is the “Tex” Cobb of national electoral politics! Hit him and hit him and bloody him up and, out-classed, you wonder why he doesn’t go down.

…except that you’re just standing there with your gloves down, mouth agape…and Ol’ Joe’s throwing all the punches….

One thing everyone must remember. The Republican and Democratic Parties were very, very, very, different parties then. Ed touched on it a bit. Protectionists ruled then.

Needless to say, both Parties have change a a great deal.

I might not agree with every jot and tittle of that party. But I will say that I admired FDR’s leadership abilities. More than I can say for that Nazi that Dems Nominated this time around. Too lefty for me.

Registration’s open at LGF – RushBaby on September 23, 2008 at 2:19 PM

The window is probably closed now but a few points worth noting (and I speak with experience because I’m also a Lizard):

1. Lizards are a tough, edgy crowd – be prepared for rough-and-tumble commentary. They will ruthlessly and mercilessly savage you in an instant if they suspect you are a troll, a moron, an evangelist or a liberal sap.

2. Lizards love to debate and will do so for hours – and days. I’ve duelled with some of their best and brightest and have the battle scars to prove it.

3. If you are a creationist, fine. Don’t try to defend it as science there or you will get creamed – I mean completely destroyed. I’ve seen it happen and it’s not pretty.

4. Charles is the jealous god of his domain. Tell him how to run his site or otherwise screw with him and you will get banned in a heartbeat.

If Hoover or FDR appeared on television in 1929 or even 1933, only a few hundred people would have seen it. Television was still an experimental medium and wouldn’t be introduced to the public for at least another decade.

In fact, widespread TV sales didn’t start until the 50s, and until the early-60s sets were still a luxury, not in every home by any means.

Does anyone really think a new VP pick is going to help Obama?? Even if he picked Hillary, would it not show how indecisive and inexperienced he really is??
I really think it would be the biggest joke in the world for him to have to come out and admit he made a bad choice for VP.

1. Lizards are a tough, edgy crowd – be prepared for rough-and-tumble commentary. They will ruthlessly and mercilessly savage you in an instant if they suspect you are a troll, a moron, an evangelist or a liberal sap.

ManlyRash on September 23, 2008 at 5:09 PM

Good advice. I’ve been a lizard for a year and a half or so. I lurk there but don’t comment much.

McCain: I think one of the reasons why America came out of the Great Depression is that Franklin Delano Roosevelt went on the radio all the time and had the fireside chats and said “here’s what we’re facing but here’s what we’re going to do.”